On Wednesday, Coleman unveiled a budget plan that, largely as a result of a $10 million boost in state aid, would:

-- Keep taxes flat.

-- Require no layoffs of city staff.

-- Continue funding the Conway and McDonough recreation centers.

-- Funnel more than $1.5 million into improvements at the El Rio Vista/Gilbert de la O ball fields on the West Side.

"We've been granted a reprieve," said city council president Kathy Lantry, referring to the state aid increase.

As a result, many property owners will see only minor changes in their tax bills next year.

Under the current budget proposal, a median-value St. Paul home with a market value of $130,500 (a 2.4 percent decrease in value compared with 2013) would pay about $26 less on the city portion of property taxes.

However, increases in fees for sanitary sewer, storm sewer, right-of-way street maintenance, recycling and water would still increase that homeowner's overall bill by $9.

Coleman and Lantry spoke at Matsuura Inc., a Japanese machine manufacturing company that opened its U.S. headquarters this year in the River Bend Business Center at Shepard Road and Randolph Avenue.

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Additional details of the mayor's budget proposal include funding for long-sought sidewalk improvements in Highland Park and an expansion at Fire Station 19, also in Highland Park, which would allow a fire engine to be relocated there.

The mayor also plans to replace all the city's street lights with energy-efficient LED fixtures, add after-hours checkout service at three libraries and enhance the police force and its capabilities.

Coleman also announced the creation of an innovations team to look for more efficiencies in city government and identify programs that need change. Scott Cordes, the city's budget director, will lead the team.

Besides the street-light replacement, Coleman said a new centralized payroll system will save $360,000 in 2014. Other changes are envisioned in the purchasing department, which was recently dropped by Ramsey County as a partner.

The city also hopes to win federal grants to hire five new police officers and then retain them through attrition and cost savings in other parts of the department's budget.

Coleman said the police force has added 34 officers in the past seven years. He plans to add two crime analysts to study patterns of burglaries and other crimes.

The police force is the largest departmental budget in the city general fund, and the mayor said he would continue to ask Chief Thomas Smith to look for efficiencies.

In 2014, the department will bring in a consultant to work out a technology plan that could free officers from phone calls and paperwork and get more cops on the street.

The mayor also called for an "immediate increase in police presence" on the East Side, pointing to a recent gang-related street fight in the Payne-Phalen neighborhood that critically injured a bystander.

In December, the city adopted a 2013 tax levy -- the total amount of taxes collected from property owners -- of $101,207,852. Coleman proposes to keep that figure exactly the same for 2014, while the city's overall budget would grow from $508,507,800 to $510,872,000, a difference of $2.36 million, or 0.46 percent.

Coleman said a $10.1 million increase in aid approved by the state Legislature allowed St. Paul to stabilize the tax levy after years of increases.

Cordes said most budget years start with a projected spending-and-revenue gap that has to be pared down by the time the budget is adopted in December.

"This year we started out with an $11 million budget gap," Cordes said Wednesday.

State aid reduced the gap, and a new sales tax exemption for a wide variety of municipal purchases will also save the city money next year.

Meanwhile, building fees and other forms of general revenue have turned a corner since the recession.

"We haven't been in this situation for a very, very long time," Cordes said. "Building fees is a great barometer of what's happening in the economy. It's starting to come back."

Responding to resident surveys, St. Paul will soon accept other types of plastics, including yogurt cups and fruit and produce containers, in its curbside blue recycling bins, which are emptied weekly by Eureka Recycling, the city's recycling coordinator.

By 2014, Eureka, which now accepts plastics labeled No. 1 and 2, will allow an expanded list of plastics to include those labeled No. 4, 5 and 7.

The goal is to replace the blue bin system of separating recyclables and move toward "single-sort" recycling in 2014, as well as distributing wheeled alley carts in 2015. In 2016, residential collection of compostable materials would be added.

Dianna Kennedy, a spokeswoman with Eureka Recycling, said she was happy to see St. Paul move toward single-sort recycling next year, but she said she believes the city could do more compost collection faster.

Coleman's administration will keep the Conway Rec Center in the Conway/Battle Creek/Highwood area open and continue to fund the St. Paul Public Housing Agency's McDonough Rec Center in the North End, though St. Paul plans to screen nonprofits that might eventually oversee programming and management for the city.

That's a momentary reprieve, said community organizer Carlos Garcia-Velasco, but his concerns continue. Partnerships between St. Paul rec centers and nonprofits have often failed, he said.

This summer, he launched a Facebook page, "Save the Rec," and mobilized youth from the McDonough Homes housing complex to paint signs and create chalk drawings in favor of keeping the center fully funded.

The city council will set a maximum tax levy on Sept. 11. St. Paul will host a "Truth in Taxation" hearing on Dec. 4, and by state statute, the final budget must be adopted by Dec. 18.